New party in the Democratic primary. Michael Bloomberg, the New York millionaire who decided to run for president when there were another twenty candidates, waved the campaign board by qualifying Tuesday in extremis to participate in this Wednesday's televised debate in Las Vegas, Nevada. The debate takes place four days before the primaries of this State, the first in the west of the country, where candidates must measure their pull with the Latino electorate.
Bloomberg has qualified after being above the 10% required in a survey published this Tuesday. The former mayor of New York appears as second in national preferences with 19%, a surprising result for someone who is not even competing on the ballots in the first four states of the primary. The first in the survey is Senator Bernie Sanders, with 31%. Meanwhile, former Vice President Joe Biden, who started as a favorite in this campaign based on a moderate speech, continues to back down in the polls. Biden was fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire. Bloomberg seems to be picking up that voter sector.
Bloomberg's presence in the debate (18.00 local time, NBC) is the first opportunity to speak directly to the Democrats on television, answer questions and, above all, see how he interacts with the two leaders in the race so far, the self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders and moderate mayor Pete Buttigieg. After a campaign built on social networks and fattened at full speed based on millions, the last few days have served as an aperitif on how that debate can be.
Bloomberg has spent $ 300 million of his own money on setting up a campaign from nothing. Your ads flood televisions and networks. Until recently he had been ignored by his rivals, but the possibility of finding him in the Las Vegas debate began to ignite the attacks. "Mr. Bloomberg has the right to run for president like everyone else, but he has no right to buy the presidency," Senator Bernie Sanders said at a rally in Richmond, near San Francisco. Sanders has built its leadership in these primaries through an unprecedented network of small donations from individuals throughout the country.
"It's a shame that Mike Bloomberg can buy his site in the debate," Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote on Twitter, struggling to maintain third place in the primaries. "But at least now the voters of the primaries who are curious about how each candidate will face Donald Trump can have a live demonstration of how we face a millionaire egolist."
The accusations of buying with money the site in the debates have also extended in these months to the Californian millionaire Tom Steyer, who spent his own money to get donations across the country to qualify him for the debates. But Steyer is far away in the polls and Bloomberg poses a real threat right now.
Bloomberg has designed a campaign outside of American political conventions. He decided to introduce himself, when the poster was already clear. He has decided not to campaign in the four states that vote first in the primaries: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Instead, he is concentrating his efforts on the big states that vote Super Tuesday (March 3), where a good result could give him a boost in the number of delegates enough to contest the nomination.